“I agree with you so fully, Mr. Boyle,” she whispered, “that I am going to marry him.”
“I guessed as much,” he answered. “At any rate I fancied it wouldn’t be for want of axing on his part.” He whirled off into a tempest of wrath because a sailor beneath had failed to keep a guide-rope taut. The occupants of the boats might have saved his life, but he would let them know that he was still chief officer for all that.
At last he stooped and gave his hand to some one who emerged from the darkness beneath.
“Glad to see you again, Miss Baring,” he said gruffly. “And you, Mrs. Somerville. And you, sir,” to the missionary. “We thought you’d gone under, an’ good folks are scarce enough as it is.”
It was a wan and broken-spirited Isobel whom Elsie led to her cabin, but notwithstanding her wretched state, her eyes quickly took in the orderly condition of the room.
“I left my clothes strewed all over the floor,” she said, with a nervousness which Elsie attributed to the hardships she had undergone. “Why did you trouble to pack them away?”
Then Elsie told her of her hunt for the poudrière, and was so obviously unconcerned about any incident other than the adventures they had both experienced since they parted, that Isobel questioned her no further. A bath and a change of clothing worked marvels. Though thin and weak for want of proper food, neither Isobel nor Mrs. Somerville had suffered in health from the exposure and short fare involved by life on the island. It was broad daylight ere they could be persuaded to retire to rest, there was so much to tell and to hear.
Meanwhile, the meeting between Tollemache and Gray was full of racial subtleties.
Tollemache, stepping forward to grasp Gray’s hand, felt it was incumbent on him to utter the first word.
“Had a pretty rotten time of it, I expect?” said he.